If you’re ever stuck on a desert island and have the chance to bring three things, don’t fret about potable water. Save your three wishes for a designer bikini, Netflix, or something more worth your while. According to Water Conditioning & Purification Magazine, activated carbon from coconut hull is a more efficient filter than activated carbon from bituminous coal. Below is a picture featuring this week’s topic of coconuts, and holding the coconut is a wonderful French traveler, writer, and inspirer I follow on Instagram, Jade Phoenix.

Since urban dictionary doesn’t quite spell it out for you, I will: This is when applications have been completed and sent, but there is neither an acceptance nor rejection from anyone. There is little to no knowledge of when an answer will arrive, if ever. This is grad school purgatory.

Did you know that bubbles can clean water? Specifically, dissolved air flotation (DAF) and ultrasound are two methods of making water safer with bubbles. DAF can be used to replace sedimentation in municipal drinking water treatment. Large particles are typically settled out using gravity, but with DAF, bubbles are produced by an oxygen tank pumping air into the bottom of a basin and small particles attach to the sides of the bubbles. The bubbles rise to the top of the basin and the particles are swept off the surface of the water by a skimmer.

The following article deviates from my conventional posts about homemade water treatment, but it is an important issue in the environmental realm- and could give scientists a clearer picture of endangered species.

“Within the field of cetacean research, a passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) system can be defined as a set of acoustic and electronic devices aimed at detecting and tracking marine mammals by listening to their vocalizations” – Brunoldi, et. al.

All Natural. Organic. Eco-friendly. Green. Farm Fresh. These are the sexy buzzwords that draw us in to products that unscrupulously exploit our desire to go green. The FDA doesn’t regulate these terms, and they are often nothing more than just words. “Green” products contain the color green on the packaging. “Farm fresh” covers essentially any meat or dairy product. “Natural” is more of a sentiment than a descriptor. And just to give you a sense of the word “organic”, Dichloromethane is an organic compound and is toxic. I definitely wouldn’t want that in my salad. So then, how should caring consumers discern the environmentally-sound eggs from the chemical-ridden cosmetics?

“UV radiation affects microorganisms by altering the DNA in the cells and impeding reproduction. UV treatment does not remove organisms from the water, it merely inactivates them.” – Water Research Center

For the longest time this summer I worked on a machine that performed persulfate-ultraviolet oxidation, but I really had no idea what it was. Looking at the machine, I could see that an oxygen tank and a beaker of persulfate solution were combining with my water samples and traveling through various tiny twisted tubes into a swirl of madness that then shot out in all directions and ended up in a scramble of numbers on the computer screen. So I asked around. Ten weeks of “asking around” later, and still all I knew was that somehow the glowing blue light was breaking down the carbon in my water samples and measuring its concentration.

Recently I had the unique opportunity to interview renowned climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. We met at the Hubbard Brook Annual Conference following his motivational speech. Dr. Oppenheimer is not only a professor of Geo-Sciences and International Affairs at Princeton, but also is a former member of the Environmental Defense Fund, and has an active role in the International Panel on Climate Change. He attained an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and a PhD in Chemical Physics, but is also versed in Atomic and Molecular Astrophysics and has even taught Astronomy at Harvard. Oppenheimer is able to speak about climate change in such a way that he has been a guest on several significant shows such as Oprah Winfrey, ABC News, and the Colbert Report. Aside from his credentials Dr. Oppenheimer is actually a very humble and inspiring person. Once you speak to him you will find he is quite delightful.

Dr. Oppenheimer is an astute climate scientist, but was also very warm and welcoming to undergraduates Jessica Turner (left) and Brandon Colon (right)